


The Harder They Fall

by OccasionalStorytelling



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Mind Control
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 20:53:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18080711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionalStorytelling/pseuds/OccasionalStorytelling
Summary: It's 2012, and Clint Barton finds himself abducted and under Loki's control. Loki, who is an absolutely horrible person for taking away Clint's ability to choose, taking away Fury's yelling at him when he messes up, taking away the stress of being a person...it's almost like a vacation. Almost. Clint can't decide if he hates this or welcomes it, but it's so hard to resist, and it's so easy to let the spell control him...Does Clint want to turn on his friends and betray SHIELD for real, or is he just tired? Does he even want to be a hero? If he wasn't being mind-controlled, what would he do?Well, it doesn't matter, because he IS being mind-controlled. But only for now...





	The Harder They Fall

It came at a bad time, was all. Any other week, Clint might have had a better chance at resisting it. Maybe he could have hesitated at a critical moment and made it a little easier on the Avengers trying to rescue him, or missed a trick shot with his arrow and thrown off Loki’s plans. As it was, Clint had been having a bad week, things happened the way they happened, and the spell was completely irresistible anyway.

 

It had been a long, uncomfortable week, another in a string of them, making up an uncomfortable two months at Selvig’s facility. Clint had been running ragged, doing surveillance, dealing with potential threats, and reporting to Fury when he had time. Now, the machine was going haywire in the middle of the night, Fury had showed up in the facility, and everyone was being evacuated. Clint was not included in “everyone,” as he was needed on the scene to make his report.

 

“I gave you this detail so you could keep a close eye on things,” Fury was saying. Clint shook himself and refocused.

 

“Well, I see better from a distance.”

 

“Are you seeing anything that might set this thing off?” Fury was angry. Of course he was angry. These days, Clint never saw him as anything _other_ than angry. Fury was constantly making these unreasonable demands on Clint, and then being surprised when he couldn’t fulfill them. Clint sighed.

 

“No one's come or gone. It's oven is clean. No contacts, no I.M.'s. If there was any tampering, sir, it wasn't at this end.” Frankly, Clint was at the end of his rope.

 

“At this end?” It was like the idea had never occurred to him, despite the fact that Clint _knew for a fact_ he’d brought it up on their last check-in.

 

"Yeah, the cube is a doorway to the other end of space, right? Doors open from both sides.”

 

Exactly as Clint had predicted, the door opened. Clint barely had time to feel vindicated before he was shoving Fury out of the way, trying to protect him from the energy blast.

 

Loki looked like something out of a nightmare, surrounded in smoke and fire from the destroyed lab equipment. He stepped off the platform towards Clint, eyes glowing horribly. Clint raised his gun, ready to end this, but Loki grabbed his wrist and twisted it away at an angle.

 

“You have heart.” It was a statement more than anything else. Loki was too close for comfort, staring into Clint’s eyes, scepter raised at Clint’s heart. Clint struggled, unable to look away.

 

This was it. He was going to die. He took a shaky breath, feeling flickers of his life pass in front of him. Natasha, his time at SHIELD, his family, his friends…all of that was going to be gone, in an instant. Clint realized this, and decided to go out fighting. He felt the tip of the scepter touch him, and he struggled away, trying to escape the stabbing that was coming.

 

God, he hoped it wasn’t going to hurt too badly.

 

This week had been horrible. He’d barely slept, and he was the type to need more than eight hours in a night. It had been a constant stream of Fury yelling at him, Selvig ignoring him, Natasha was out on a mission and couldn’t take any calls, he could tell he was getting a cold, he was behind on his paperwork, and his team just couldn’t take what they were doing at the facility seriously. Everything was just one stressor after another, one anxiety right on the heels of the other. That morning, Clint had struggled to get out of bed. He wasn’t going to have that problem anymore, at least. Based on his previous experiences, it didn’t seem like dead people felt stress.

 

The scepter didn’t go through his skin, at least not that Clint could feel. He felt numb in his chest, breath freezing in his lungs, body going still. It didn’t feel like a normal stabbing, but he’d never been stabbed to death before, so how would he know what _that_ felt like?

 

Everything went black. Time stood still. Clint felt himself beginning to stand up, as if in a dream. He opened his eyes. Everything looked blue, like someone had slid a film over his vision. Clint could see Loki moving around the room, doing something to the other SHIELD agents.

 

Clint felt…weird. He couldn’t move his arms and legs, couldn’t relax the alert posture he’d adopted without his control. People were talking, but Clint couldn’t quite hear them. Everything came through a fog.

 

Fury was saying something, but Clint could feel that Fury wasn’t talking to him, so he didn’t pay attention. Clint stood very still, taking in his environment.

 

He felt like he was on the edge of a dream, like he was lying in bed on a rainy morning, seconds before the alarm clock went off. He didn’t move, no, _couldn’t_ move, but he didn’t feel like he had to. If he could just close his eyes, he’d fall back asleep, and finally get the rest he’d so desperately missed this past week. He moved his hand to turn off the alarm clock, but he wasn’t in bed. He was holding his gun, and he fired it, not even registering where he was aiming.

 

He’d fired his gun, clearly. He was looking at it, and he’d squeezed the trigger. But it wasn’t him, somehow. He hadn’t tried to move, it had just…happened. Clint looked up. He’d shot Fury.

 

Panic threatened to overwhelm him. He’d shot Fury, and he couldn’t stop himself from walking over to the body—was Fury alive?—and grabbing the tesseract, following Loki out of the room.

 

Part of him, a silky voice in his head, said that he’d done the right thing. He was being so good, not resisting, and Loki was very happy with him. The words felt blue and green in Clint’s head, and cold. Clint tried to shove them away, but the control didn’t fade.

 

A tiny part, distant in the back of Clint’s mind, said that Fury deserved what he got for never appreciating Clint’s talents. Getting shot would teach Fury not to yell at Clint anymore. Clint almost mistook that voice for Loki, but it sounded too much like his own thoughts. Clint brushed it away, focused on resisting Loki’s control.

 

Clint could _feel_ himself thinking. It was a creepy feeling, because consciously, he was lost in a haze of panic and trying to snap out of this. He could feel gears turning in his head as his body escorted Loki to the garage, and his voice demanded vehicles from Maria Hill, pretending to be following an order from Fury.

 

Clint was almost impressed with himself. He’d thought about what it would be like to turn on SHIELD, just a few times, never seriously considering it, but here he was, jerked around like a puppet and somehow still _planning,_ without actively participating in it.

 

“Don’t listen to me, Maria! Loki’s got me under his control! You need to find Nat,” Clint yelled, but what came out was “need these vehicles” in Clint’s own voice, sounding gruff and harsh.

 

Everything after that was a blur of motion, as Clint escorted Loki to a helicopter and jumped in after him. It was odd, to _feel_ a sense of purpose beneath the surface of his thoughts, but to not have to think about what he was doing—no, that was the wrong choice of words. He was _trying_ to think about what he was doing, but he wasn’t in control. Was Loki? Clint made choices and movements as if he was his own self, but everything looked blue, and he couldn’t stop himself from strapping himself into the cockpit of the chopper. He couldn’t even look back at the facility, but he could hear Loki blowing it up.

 

He drifted in and out of focus, without a direct command from Loki to follow. His body relaxed into the chair, adrenaline starting to run out the longer he sat. Clint became aware of a pain in his leg, where a bullet had gazed him, he thought, but he couldn’t move to look at it or get the first aid kit.

 

How many SHIELD agents had been captured along with him? All under Loki’s control. How was Clint supposed to break free of this?

 

Loki was hovering over Loki’s shoulder. He looked freaked out, and kept looking back at the remains of the facility.

 

“I can’t believe that worked!” Loki almost whispered. He was out of breath.

 

Clint didn’t look back at him, staring straight ahead out the front window of the chopper.

 

Loki frowned, and made a fist. He twisted it slowly in midair, and Clint felt a corresponding twist somewhere near his occipital lobe, a cold shiver of a feeling. His head shook a little, still out of Clint’s control.

 

“I’m a fucking puppet,” Cline whispered, angrily, but what came out was a concerned “Boss?”

 

Boss. Who the _fuck_ was Loki kidding? Clint was never going to willingly work for Loki, and the second he got control of his arms, back, he was going to throttle this—

 

“Are you okay, Boss?” Clint wanted to vomit. His voice sounded genuinely concerned. What kind of sicko makes his hypnotized goons pretend to care about him?

 

Loki curled up on the floor, tucking his knees up to his chest, and holding the scepter in front of him. He looked like a little kid at a sleepover. “I’m just nervous, Barton,” Loki sighed. “I mean, humans are weaklings, obviously, but the last time I was on Earth, Thor beat me pretty severely.”

 

“We’ll get him,” Clint’s voice said, body now turned back supportively towards Loki.

 

“Do I even _want_ to face him? I hope he doesn’t come after me, the _bastard._ He should just stay on Asgard and be the king Father always wanted him to be,” Loki hissed, angrily.

 

Clint’s arm reached out and gently rubbed Loki’s knee. “You don’t deserve how he treated you,” Clint was saying, against his will. “Your father, Thor…neither of them understood you.” Clint hated this. “You can’t brainwash people into being your friends,” Clint tried to say, but the words didn’t come.

 

“You’re right,” Loki said, settling backwards, seemingly to relax. He unclenched his fist and Clint was turned back to face the front, inadvertently grunting from the pain in his leg. It would seem that he _had_ been shot. Good on Maria. He’d always liked her. “Barton!”

 

“Boss?” _Fuck you._

 

“You’re hurt! Let me fix that,” Loki was saying, and Clint couldn’t move away, couldn’t call out for help, couldn’t escape as Loki moved closer with the scepter, touching it to his leg…and healing the wound with a warm flow of energy.

 

Clint wanted to lean down, check his leg, make sure it had worked, but he still couldn’t control his body. He struggled futilely against the control, trying to move, desperate to get away. He could feel panic overwhelming him, even though his breathing remained steady and his heart rate didn’t change.

 

“There you go,” Loki smiled. “That’s a reward, for being so obedient.”

 

A tiny, tiny part of Clint, the same one that had been glad to see Fury go down, smiled. It seemed _Loki_ would appreciate Clint’s talents. When was the last time SHIELD had ever shown their appreciation, for everything Clint did for them?

 

Clint passed out, eyes open, body functional, but consciousness flowing gently away.


End file.
